USA, Microsoft launches Office Live

Redmond (USA) – Yesterday Microsoft officially launched a new online services portal, Office Live, which undoubtedly represents a milestone for the software house’s strategies relating to web services.

Currently available only for US users, Office Live includes a set of software and services, all accessible from the officelive.com site, dedicated to companies with up to 10 employees . In spite of the name, Office Live is not the web-based version of Office, but an online tool suite with which a company can create its own corporate website, foster collaboration between employees, and provide its customers with new information resources and support.

Microsoft provides three different levels of service : the free Basics offers a domain name, 25 email accounts of 2 GB each; a web space of 500 MB and a graphic tool to create the site; tools to monitor and analyze web traffic; a platform with which to manage any advertising campaigns. The latter, called Office Live adManager Beta, is a direct competitor of Google AdWords.

L’ Essentials subscription which costs $ 19.95 per month, includes the same features as the basic service and adds a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) application, an extra gigabyte of Web space, and double the number of email accounts that can also be used. to access instant messaging services, a calendar and a personal workspace with 500 MB of space to store data and documents.

Finally, the Premium subscription which costs $ 39.95 a month and which, in addition to including even more storage and accounts, grants access to a wider range of hosted business applications (usable via the Web).

“Businesses that sign up for Office Live will find it easier and cheaper than ever to create and manage their business online,” said Rajesh Jha, corporate vice president for Office Live at Microsoft. “Office Live can give a strong boost to the growth and profitability of your business”.

Microsoft defines Office Live as an “open” platform, in the sense that its partners can develop new applications to add to Office Live and, at the same time, implement the services of the latter platform within their own software. This is simplified by the fact that Microsoft developed Office Live using technologies AJAX which has become the de facto standard of the “new generation” Web.

At the same time as the launch in the USA, Microsoft has started beta testing of Office Live in France, Germany, Japan and Great Britain. In Italy the service will be made available over the next year.